I know anything beyond the grave; yet my heart yearns to meet them
"with the Lord," and I bless Him that He permits me to comfort myself
with the hope of doing so. Nor let it be alleged as an insuperable
objection to all this anticipated happiness, that knowledge of the
saved would imply knowledge of the lost, and that this would balance
the pleasure we hope for, by the great pain by which we, it is
assumed, must thus be compelled to endure. For even admitting that
such knowledge would be possessed at all, which is very doubtful; yet
surely, at the worst, this is a strange way of escaping pain from the
knowledge that some are lost, by taking refuge in the ignorance of any
being saved! I shall not prove this further, but express my joy in
heartily believing that we shall resume our intercourse with every
Christian friend; that remembering all the past, and reading it for
the first time aright, because reading in the full light of revealed
truth, we shall know and love as we never knew and loved here; and
shall sit down at that glorious intellectual, moral, and social feast,
not with ideal persons and strangers, but with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, with Peter, Paul, and John, and with every saint of God!

But I have not as yet spoken of one friend there who will be the
centre of that bright society--"Jesus the Mediator of the new
covenant!" "I will take you to _Myself_," is the blessed promise. "We
shall see Him as He is," is the longed-for-vision. "We shall be like
Him," is the hoped-for perfection. To know, to love, to be in all
things like Jesus, and to hold communion with Him for ever--what "an
exceeding weight of glory!" Jesus will never be separated personally
from His people; nor can they ever possibly separate their character,
their joy, or their safety from His atoning death for them on earth,
or from His constant life for them in heaven. It is the Lamb who shall
lead them to living fountains of waters; and the Lamb upon the throne